Friday, July 17, 2015

Not missing Starbucks

A cappuccino at the bar (think small restaurant or café,
not what the word connotes in the US) nearest the apartment I rented in
Florence costs 1 euro, i.e., a little more than $1.10. Not only is it about a
third the price of a Starbucks’ cappuccino, they serve it in a ceramic cup and
with better coffee and foam than at Starbucks. Admittedly, it’s smaller, though
I suspect that the shot of espresso is the same size in both places.

After having walked dozens of miles in Florence, I
have yet to see a single Starbucks or other American restaurant or coffee
franchise. There are US retail outlets as well as retailers from elsewhere in
the European Union. I don’t know if there are legal barriers to entry that keep
non-EU food franchisees out. However, if such legal barriers exist, I doubt
that they are necessary. I don’t know why anyone would want to spend more and
get less.

Vienna has lots of US fast food outlets and several
Starbucks coffee shops. I ducked into one of the latter for a brief look. My impression
is that most of the customers were tourists, especially from the US, willing to
pay exorbitant prices for the familiar. I did not buy anything, having
discovered that Viennese coffee was both better and less expensive.

Traveling without experiencing the local culture
seems a waste of time.

Florence has an extensive system of parks. Sadly,
the parks all need more attention. The government that could afford to build
the parks can no longer afford to maintain them (or, alternatively, the
government that built the parks could not really afford to build them, much
less to maintain them).

The park system here reminds me of the
transportation and utility infrastructure in the US. The governments that built
what were often the best roads, bridges, parks, utilities, airports, ports,
etc., in the world no longer properly maintains those facilities. Unless the US
substantially increases its infrastructure investments, the US will continue to
lose its global economic competitive edge and suffer from a diminution in
quality of life. The first signs of the latter are already evident: bridges
with warnings about diminished load capacity, parks with closed or inadequate
facilities, unrepaired pot holes, etc. In other words, US roads may begin to
resemble Italian sidewalks!

Instead, the US spends exorbitant sums on national
defense. In fact, much of the money is wasted, either purchasing advanced
weapons systems that the US will probably never use in combat or funding
operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere that have little
realistic chance of success. Terrorism poses a real, but limited threat.
Unfortunately, US counterterrorism efforts are generally ineffectual and
unethical (to read my proposals for effective, ethical counterterrorism against
non-state terrorists, read my book, Just
Counterterrorism, available through Amazon).